Free Underground Time by Delphine de Vigan

be deprived of her job. Because she’s incompatible .
    Given that confidence has been damaged, and bearing in mind the major challenges that marketing faces today, it is natural that Jacques should make arrangements and reorganise the department. Because the business must respond to constantly changing demands, give itself the ability to anticipate them, to win market share, to strengthen its international position, because the business cannot be content to follow, because the business must be cutting edge. That’s what Patricia Lethu told her at their second meeting. As though she had learnt by heart the ‘2012 Horizon’ leaflet put out by the head of PR.
     
    Jacques’s attitude, the reasons for his behaviour, the machinations Mathilde was subject to, cannot be considered in and of themselves. The scenario isn’t foreseen in any software or on any checklist. The business agrees to recognise that there is a problem, which is the first step towards the search for a solution. Internal transfer seems most likely, but posts don’t become available all that often, and some of them, when they do fall vacant, aren’t being filled.
     
    At the end of the meeting, in a more hushed tone (having made certain that the door was properly closed), in a sudden outburst of solidarity, Patricia Lethu advised her to put down in writing the points of disagreement with Jacques. And to send her emails with confirmation of receipt.
    ‘But rest assured, we’ll find a solution, Mathilde,’ she hastened to add.
     
    For a few weeks Mathilde no longer had anything to do. Nothing.
    Not just a slack period, a slowing-down, a quiet stretch, a few days to catch her breath after a period of working flat out. Nothing as in zero, a complete void.
     
    At the start, the team continued to seek her help, to consult her, to draw on her experience. But every document approved by her incurred Jacques’s wrath. All it took was for her to have looked at a file, to have glanced at a study, or intervened in the choice of a contractor or a methodology, or given her agreement for a product plan, for him to oppose it. So gradually Nathalie, Jean, Éric and the others stopped coming into her office and asking her advice. They found the support they needed elsewhere.
    They chose which side they were on.
    So as not to risk being next on the list, to preserve their peace of mind. Through cowardice more than ill will.
    She doesn’t blame them. Sometimes she tells herself that at twenty-five or thirty, she wouldn’t have had the courage either.
     
    In any case, it’s too late. Without realising it, she has allowed Jacques to construct a system of avoidance and exclusion, whose effectiveness is ever apparent and against which she can do nothing.

Her ring binders and files have been piled up, split between the shelves and the cupboard with sliding doors. Mathilde finds the contents of her drawer in a cardboard box on the floor: vitamin C, paracetamol, stapler, Sellotape, felt-tips, Tippex, biros and various supplies.
    She’s never had photos of her children on her desk. No vases, pot plants or holiday souvenirs. Apart from her Bonnard poster, she’s brought nothing from home, hasn’t tried to personalise her space or mark her territory.
    She’s always felt that the company was a neutral, emotion-free zone where those things didn’t belong.
     
    She’s been transferred to office 500-9. She’ll put away her things, settle in. She tries to persuade herself that it’s not important, that it doesn’t alter anything. She’s above it. Should she feel attached to her office the way she would to a bedroom? That’s ludicrous. Here at least she is far away from Jacques, far away from everything, at the other end.
    At the end of the end, where no one comes except to go to the toilets.
     
    Mathilde sits on her new seat, swivels, checks the castors. The desk and the side table are covered in a fine layer of dust. The metal filing cabinet doesn’t match the rest.